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Education For Employment (EFE) and Citi Foundation celebrated their eighth year of collaboration in 2021 by launching the project “Providing Opportunities for Work and Empowering Resilience” to create economic opportunities for unemployed youth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

About 1 in 3 young people in the region are unemployed. Thanks to the EFE-Citi Foundation partnership dating back from 2013, to date 3,600 young people have developed the most-in-demand soft and technical skills and joined the world of work with confidence and hope.

As Elissar Farah Antonios, MENA Cluster Head at Citi, highlighted, “this collaboration reflects Citi’s and EFE’s shared belief that with the right skills and economic opportunities, young people can transform their lives, uplift their families and contribute to their communities.”

Throughout the past years, trainees in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have developed the necessary skills for a successful job search – from researching job openings and writing a CV, to performing well in an interview –, as well as highly-demanded soft and technical skills such as communication, self-confidence, creativity or sales techniques, among others, and have been connected to decent jobs in each country, improving not only their livelihoods but also those of their families and communities. This collective effort is part of Citi Foundation’s initiative “Pathways to Progress”, which aims to support one million youth worldwide by 2023, providing them with useful tools to secure employment or start their own businesses.

Programme success has resulted in a partnership renewal through the project “Providing Opportunities for Work and Empowering Resilience 2.0”, which will run from December 2021 until November 2022 and will directly impact the lives of an additional 740 youth, bringing the total number of youth benefitting from the partnership to over 4,300.

To provide the best learning experience, online and in-classroom training sessions will be coupled with workshops and events, allowing trainees and graduates to benefit from the experience of trainers, successful entrepreneurs, employers, Citi and Citi Foundation representatives and other stakeholders, and share the challenges they faced during their job search journey and the transformation into success stories.

Thanks to this support, coupled with that of Accenture, EFE’s long-term partner and world leader in consulting and technological innovation, vulnerable people have also developed further in-demand soft and digital skills and increased their employability through Accenture’s online Learning and Management system, Emplea+, which to date has benefited tens of thousands of women and men. The training content is in constant evolution, informed by thorough market research and conversations with NGOs and private sector companies.

According to Ana Martiningui, CEO of Education For Employment-Europe, “In addition to directly impacting the lives of thousands of youth throughout the region, the EFE-Citi Foundation partnership has allowed us to invest in areas such as strategy, sustainability, new technologies and innovation. It has been and continues to be crucial for Education For Employment’s growth and impact”.

The installation of hiring kiosks in Morocco to innovate and increase EFE’s sourcing capacity and job matching services; the use of a business intelligence tool in Morocco and Tunisia to identify real time job opportunities and the most-in-demand skills in today’s workforce; or support to adapt curricula to market needs, especially following the changes caused by COVID-19, are just a few examples. Thanks to the support of Citi Foundation, Accenture and other partners and employers who invest in talent, since 2006 EFE has been able to impact over 125,500 young people in the MENA.